Annex A
Public Voice's definition of Public Service
Broadcasting and recommendations on clarifying broadcasters remits:
Public service broadcasting must be clearly
and fully defined and enshrined in legislation. We propose the
following definition:
Public Service Broadcasting requires a mixed
and high quality range of programmes including educational and
educative programming, children's programmes, religious programmes,
social action programming and coverage of news and current affairs,
arts, science and international issues across all mainstream free-to-air
channels at peak and off peak times. It obliges broadcasters to
reflect the UK's cultural and ethnic diversity in national, regional
and local programming and to demonstrate a commitment to enabling
individuals to take action. Additionally it necessitates the maximising
of opportunities to develop appropriate new services through a
mixture of communications methods (eg supporting broadcasting
with online services) whilst ensuring that core information and
support materials are available in traditional forms for those
who can only access them in this way.
Clear categorisation is needed, within the legislation,
of the requirements on broadcasters under each of the three proposed
tiers of regulation.
Our recommendations are:
Tier 2: must include specific requirements for
independent productions and original productions; targets and
resource allocations for regional productions and regional programming;
availability of news and current affairs in peak time across all
mainstream free-to-air channels.
Tier 3: must include specific requirements for
each broadcaster on coverage of educational material, children's
programmes, social action programming, religious programmes and
coverage of news and current affairs, arts, science and international
issues as well as specific requirements for each broadcaster to
reflect the UK's cultural and ethnic diversity. This could be
developed on a "sliding scale" system where the BBC
and Channel 4 have the highest public service requirements, followed
by the rest of the current public service broadcasters, but with
other commercial broadcasters acquiring their own public service
obligations when they reach a certain level of audience reach
or share.
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